


head above water

by spidermooned (softlyblue)



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Coping Mechanisms, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Anxiety, Implied Past Character Death, i'm too unmotivated to do this properly, idk - Freeform, yknow cos ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 12:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14592672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/spidermooned
Summary: so he collects big hoodies and elastic bands, and he avoids tony stark's dad talks, and he tells his multi-million dollar ai about his feelings. sometimes. other times, he just throws himself off high places, and waits until the last second to catch himself from the ground.





	head above water

**Author's Note:**

> throwback to that time i snapped an elastic band on my wrist so many times it flung off and hit me in the eye and i looked like i got punched in the face

**1.**

there was a time, long ago, when peter didn't like wearing clothes too big for him. he thought he looked too small, too skinny, too defenceless, and so he wore small hoodies and jeans and stuff, and hats, and tried to look big.  _bigger._

now he spends time in the spiderman suit, and looking big doesn't seem all that important anymore. he buys hoodies a size too big, and he cuts holes in the sleeves for his thumbs to slip through. the collars are loose, so he can drown in them. 

"you look kinda dumb," ned tells him, when he comes over one night to find peter in a hoodie that stretches past his knees. "like, if you put a belt around you, you'd totally be in a dress right now."

"yeah, but who's around to care?"

ned grins. "fair point, dude. pass me darth sidious, yo - behind you -"

 

**2.**

may does up his lunch with an elastic band one day, because the box has broken. he snaps it onto his wrist once he's done eating, and throughout the afternoon classes he finds himself snapping it back onto his skin - he drifts off, and snaps, and he's back to where he is. 

he doesn't take the band off. 

the suit gloves morph over it with ease, and he doesn't snap or fidget when he's  _spiderman,_ because spiderman is - just what he is, and peter doesn't need to remind himself of that. when he's taking the suit  _off,_ the elastic band is there - it's red, because may has a weird sense of humour, and it makes little red stripes on the inside of his wrist when he lifts it and snaps it back. 

truth is, peter is scared of falling. he's not an idiot - he's been warned by tony, in veiled half-lines and claps on the back, not to go wandering off the straight and narrow in search of something to make him feel better. 

(and in any case, what would he turn to? may barely allows the vigilante stuff; peter thinks she'd throw a fit if she found him drinking, or smoking, or - other things, damaging things that tony talks about only in sighs and eyebrow wriggles.) 

but snap-snap-snap doesn't do anyone any harm. it doesn't break the skin, and peter has a healing factor to rival logan's, so the bruises hardly last five minutes. 

snap-snap-snap. 

"you do that a lot," mj says. she's got a handful of salad leaves, and she's eating them like potato crisps. "why do you bother with the big sleeves when you're gonna pull 'em up to slap it?"

peter shrugs. "aesthetic."

ned snorts into his milkshake. 

the elastic band is cheap, and it falls apart after a week of treating peter's wrist. he buys a new packet in the dollar store, and picks out the red and blue ones, and counts them. there are thirty. fourteen red, sixteen blue, and he lines them up so they alternate, and he bins the greens and yellows, and the methodology of it is weird and calming and makes his hands stop shaking. 

he puts a blue one on, and snaps. 

 

**3.**

"you look like shit," tony tells him. 

"so do you."

"point taken."

peter looks out the car window. tony had driven to the front of the school, and then quickly realised his mistake when all the nerdy tech kids swarmed his car like ants to a honeyjar.  _meet me 3 blocks east_ he'd texted peter, and the car purred alongside him until they lost even the most avid highschooler fan.

"is this a dad talk?" happy asks through the partition. "because if it is, i'm gonna just..." he lets his sentence fade away into the hum of the black glass sliding up. 

"it's not a dad talk," tony tells the back of his driver's head. "aw, shit." 

"you got duped," peter says, slumping in his chair. "now you're a dad. how's it feel?"

"awful."

"welcome to my world."

tony rolls his eyes. "that's my line, kid."

they drive in silence. peter wants to ask where they're going, but he's sort of scared tony will decide he's not old enough to go there, so he sits and fidgets and thinks about the suit in his backpack and about the chem lab he has due on friday and about how fucking  _weird_ this is, all bundled up in tony stark's car. tony is sitting where peter sat, last time. they went to germany, last time. 

"kid," tony says, when happy has deposited them in the underground garage of stark tower, "you know the suit records everything you do?"

"yeah?" peter hasn't done anything ridiculous recently, though. in the comedown from thanos, most of the evil jitterbugs have scampered off into whatever evil jitterbug lairs they call home, leaving petty burglaries and car thieves the worst of what peter has to deal with. "yeah, but i haven't done anything bad recently..?"

"the suit records audio," tony says. "and - uh, happy, do you wanna... get me a coffee?"

"yeah, yeah," happy shuffles off, clapping peter and his employer on the back in the same sort of familial back-slap. 

"records audio," tony continues once he's gone, and he's facing peter with his hands in his pockets, like a teacher trying to relate to him. "and, after all that shit on titan, i asked karen to flag any worrying content for my review."

peter shrugs. "i don't have any -  _oh."_

"just thought you should know. and, uh, in my experience, talking to a real human is always better," tony says, and peter finds comfort only in the fact that he's obviously as uneasy with this conversation as peter is. 

"okay," says peter. he feels a little sick. 

"wanna come fuck about with robots for a bit?"

"uh - yeah."

 

**4.**

because - 

"hey, karen," he says, the mask pressed over his face, his whole body frozen from the cold concrete wall he's perched on. "what's up?"

"nothing," she replies. "my primary function is your safety, and you are not active. therefore, neither am i. i am talking to you, though."

"cool, yeah." he's cold, and everything reminds him of ben these days. he walked past a kebab shop and he smelled chips and he remembered how ben used to drench his takeaway in vinegar, and now he's up here, thinking about ben and vinegar and chips and swallowing tears. 

"are you okay? your heartbeat is elevated."

"yeah, i know."

"are you in distress? would you like me to contact someone?"

"no," he says, and  _"no!"_ when tony stark's contact information flashes up on his hud screen. "karen - no, seriously. i'm fine. i'm fine, dude, don't call tony, it's really nothing to worry about." 

"okay."

peter looks across the city. he's hungry,  _starving,_ but he doesn't really want to move.

"peter," karen says. "i have heard that talking calms people down."

"just... you ever lose someone? you ever, like..." he swallows against the hobbles of his throat, "you ever watch 'em bleed out, and you know you could've stopped it if you weren't such a -  _such yourself,_ and you think it'll pass but it never does, an'... and no matter how many fuckin' bagsnatchers you get, you never get rid of it? you ever feel that?"

a long, long silence. 

"no, peter," says karen. "i am an ai. i am incapable of this."

"oh."

"but i think if you were to die, while wearing this suit, i would know what it feels like." 

 

**5.**

so he collects big hoodies and elastic bands, and he avoids tony stark's dad talks, and he tells his multi-million dollar ai about his feelings. sometimes. other times, he just throws himself off high places, and waits until the last second to catch himself from the ground. 

 

**6.**

and this, and that, and the other thing. he feels like he's floating, a lot of the time, and the ocean is very very big and peter is very, very, very small. 

 

**7.**

may is growing her hair out, and sometimes she props it back with sunglasses even in winter, because ben bought her those glasses the time they went to florida and walked around the designer shops. (they aren't designer. they're knockoff, but ben said she looked pretty as a doll, and then he picked her up and twirled her around and bought everyone ice-cream.) 

on the anniversary of That Day, her and peter don't go to the grave. they go and buy ice cream and they sit on the couch and watch the lord of the rings, and may holds his hand and tells him she's proud of him. 

(unspoken is that ben would be, too.) 

peter kind of wants to tell her everything, because she knows most of it already, but he feels bad when he sees how her hands shake, every time spiderman comes on the morning news. 

he doesn't really need to tell her anything. she just hugs him, and maybe he cries, and then they go to sleep and in the morning she kisses him on the forehead and tells him he's the best son she ever could have asked for. 

 

**8.**

and he copes. of course he does. 

"i'm  _spiderman,"_ he says, with as much confidence as he can muster, and when he jumps out of his window he knows he'll land on his feet, no matter how far the fall. 

**Author's Note:**

> AYY
> 
>  
> 
> [real actual twt](https://twitter.com/sweetlysofts)  
> [marvel shitpost twt](https://twitter.com/spidermooned)  
>  [cc](https://curiouscat.me/sweetlysofts)  
> comment n stuff mwah


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